


Why Bother

by MidnightSpade



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Headcanon, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, relationships are only hinted at
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 23:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6030510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightSpade/pseuds/MidnightSpade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sans sleeps a lot during the day because he doesn't sleep at night. Because sleeping means the nightmares will plague him again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Bother

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this at 3am when I had terrible insomnia myself, so it might not make much sense. It's just a string of thoughts and feelings I suppose.

When the nightmares came, Sans tossed and turned in his bed, waking up tangled in his sheets and sprawled halfway onto the floor. He never righted them afterwards, letting them remain in a big tangle once he'd crawled out of them. Papyrus would berate him for keeping a messy room, but what was the point? They'd end up tangled the next night too.

What was the point in anything really? The timeline would reset, and his bed would never be made.

At least that's what Sans told himself.

It had been 2,287 days since they'd left the Underground. He knew because he kept a record. He always did in every timeline. There was an old and ratty notebook hidden under his bed, under the piles of clothes shoved under there, accompanied by a simple pencil.

In that notebook was a line for every day since they'd left the Underground. Before those pages was a line for every day since the barrier was put in place.

Pages upon pages of simple lines, a tally of days he kept track of.

Every day Sans would mark a new line, a new day. He counted every one. If there were too few then he'd know even before he left the house if the timeline had been reset.

It had happened before, it would happen again.

Those are what his nightmares were made out of.

A child with demonic eyes. Sharp green vines tearing apart his bones. Dust coating his hands like snow.

Things had repeated so many times, what was even the point in trying anymore.

Why pay his tab at Grillby's when things would just reset and there'd be nothing on it anymore?

Why be a sentry when the humans would get past him anyway and end up meeting their deaths?

Why try anything at all when all his efforts would be for nothing?

Some nights he wouldn't be in his own bed. Those nights still were restless, but not quite so much. In arms made of fire, or fur, or bone, he felt protected, he felt safe. Still uneasy, but perhaps not so much.

When he'd wake he'd have a soft crackle, a kind voice, a warm hug, to ease away the pains of his terrors. They would rock him back to sleep, they understood his worries as much as they could.

Even now when the timeline stayed so strong and sturdy Sans knew there was still a chance it could all vanish and they'd end up back where the sky was just jagged rock and the ground was either cold, wet, molten, or metal.

So why bother?

 


End file.
